TESS-India (Teacher Education Through School-Based Support) Aims to Improve the Classroom

TESS-India (Teacher Education through School-based Support) aims to improve the classroom practices of elementary and secondary teachers in India through the provision of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support teachers in developing student-centred, participatory approaches.The TESS-India OERs provide teachers with a companion to the school textbook. They offer activities for teachers to try out in their classrooms with their students, together with case studies showing how other teachers have taught the topic and linked resources to support teachers in developing their lesson plans and subject knowledge.

TESS-India OERs have been collaboratively written by Indian and international authors to address Indian curriculum and contexts and are available for online and print use (http://www.tess-india.edu.in/). The OERs are available in several versions, appropriate for each participating Indian state and users are invited to adapt and localise the OERs further to meet local needs and contexts.

TESS-India is led by The Open University UK and funded by UK aid from the UK government.

Video resources

Some of the activities in this unit are accompanied by the following icon: . This indicates that you will find it helpful to view the TESS-India video resources for the specified pedagogic theme.

The TESS-India video resources illustrate key pedagogic techniques in a range of classroom contexts in India. We hope they will inspire you to experiment with similar practices. They are intended to complement and enhance your experience of working through the text-based units, but are not integral to them should you be unable to access them.

TESS-India video resources may be viewed online or downloaded from the TESS-India website, http://www.tess-india.edu.in/). Alternatively, you may have access to these videos on a CD or memory card.

Version 2.0 SM12v1

All India - English

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Developing creative thinking in mathematics: trigonometry

What this unit is about

Trigonometry plays a very important role in the Indian National Curriculum Framework (2005). It links concepts about shape and space with other mathematical ideas such as ratio, deduction and mathematical proof. It also provides an opportunity to link what is observed in real life with the world of the mathematics classroom.

Unfortunately, many students do not experience the richness, connections or creativity that trigonometry allows. Instead they often perceive it as another memory exercise where rules and formulae must be learnt ‘by rote’, along with methods for working out problems.

This unit aims to help you address these views by working on trigonometry in a playful and creative way, using the students’ mental thinking powers. The unit will show that if you make small changes to tasks, students will be able to learn more effectively. When students are allowed to make more choices and decisions themselves, they can enjoy trigonometry and feel empowered by their mathematics learning.

/ Pause for thought
· Think about your classroom. What do your students think about learning trigonometry? How much do they enjoy it? Why do you think this is?
· Think back to when you were learning trigonometry in school. What would you have liked to have been different in the way you were taught the subject (if anything)?

What you can learn in this unit

· How to promote the use of mathematical terminology that supports the use of trigonometry.

· How to teach concepts and applications of trigonometry through activities that are creative and playful.

· Some ideas to support your students in developing problem solving methods that rely less on memorisation.

This unit links to the teaching requirements of the NCF (2005) and NCFTE (2009) outlined in Resource 1.

1 Creativity in learning mathematics

Creativity in learning has become a fashionable concept in recent years. Creativity is partly about allowing students to enjoy learning more and think for themselves. It is also important to prepare students for the jobs of the future. In the future, jobs will rely less and less on doing things mechanistically (as this can be done by computers) and more on problem solving, thinking outside the box and coming up with creative solutions.

It is not always easy to see how school mathematics and textbook practice can be turned into creative learning approaches. This unit aims to give some ideas in this direction. It builds on the perspective of creativity as ‘possibility thinking’ (Aristeidou, 2011), using ‘What if?’ scenarios.

Research has identified a list of teaching and learning features that are involved in possibility thinking in the classroom (Grainger et al., 2007; Craft et al., 2012). These include posing questions, experimenting with ideas, taking risks, playing around and working collaboratively.

The tasks in this unit work on these features.

/ Pause for thought
Think about a time that you felt you have been creative in your thinking. It does not have to be about doing mathematics – it could, for example, be when you were cooking, doing a handicraft, solving a tricky problem at home or thinking about something. What happened? Was there, for example, any questioning, experimenting, playfulness, risk-taking or collaboration involved?

2 The role of choice

Playfulness is considered important to support creativity because in play you explore many possible solutions in a spontaneous way. This is known as divergent thinking. The word ‘playfulness’ is often associated with young children, but should not be restricted to them. Play is about exploring and experimenting, which anyone of any age can do. Simply watching children play can be a good reminder of their creativity.

When they are exploring and experimenting, it is important that students have choices: the choice to approach a problem in different ways, the option to make mistakes or the choice to come up with their own conjectures and test whether they are valid or not. In Activity 1 you give students that choice by simply asking the question, ‘In how many ways can you …?’

The activity aims for students to become knowledgeable and confident that closed polygons can be divided into right-angled triangles. This will enable them to ‘just do it’ when they have to find right-angled triangles to use in trigonometry problems later, such as when proving the cosine rule. In that way, being able to play with right-angled triangles in a polygon can become a tool to ‘getting unstuck’ later.

This task works well for students first exploring possibilities on their own, and then discussing these with classmates or in groups to get more ideas and refine their thinking.

Before attempting to use the activities in this unit with your students, it would be a good idea to complete all (or at least part) of the activities yourself. It would be even better if you could try them out with a colleague, as that will help you when you reflect on the experience. Trying the activities yourself will mean that you get insights into learners’ experiences that can in turn influence your teaching and your experiences as a teacher. When you are ready, use the activities with your students. After the lesson, think about the way that the activity went and the learning that happened. This will help you to develop a more learner-focused teaching environment.

Activity 1: Students investigate triangles in polygons

Ask your students the following:
· In how many ways can you divide each of the shapes in Figure 1 into right-angled triangles?

Figure 1 An equilateral triangle and a hexagon.
· Draw any right-angled triangle (Figure 2). What kind of closed polygons can you construct by using this triangle as a building block?

Figure 2 A right-angled triangle.
Figure 3 shows an example.

Figure 3 A square made up of eight right-angled triangles.
· Do you think that all closed polygons can be formed by right angled triangles? Give reasons to justify your answer.
· Why do you think this activity asks you to investigate whether any closed polygons can be made up of right-angled triangles?
/ Video: Involving all
http://tinyurl.com/video-involvingall

You may also want to have a look at the key resource ‘Involving all’ (http://tinyurl.com/kr-involvingall).

Case Study 1: Mrs Nagaraju reflects on using Activity 1
This is the account of a teacher who tried Activity 1 with her secondary students.
What really struck me was the enthusiasm of the students when doing this activity. I had not expected that. We read the first question of the task together and I then asked the students to work on their own for a while, because I wanted them to have the opportunity to think on their own first. They could discuss their ideas with their classmates when they felt ready.
Everyone got really busy trying to divide the given figure into right-angled triangles. Some started by dividing the figure into triangles that were not right-angled triangles; I decided not to interfere immediately, as I would normally do, but allow the students to make their own mistakes! I noticed that most of these students self-corrected: they glanced at other students’ work, read the question again and changed what they were doing. They did not lose their enthusiasm and continued with what seemed like new energy.
When some students had started discussing their ideas, I stopped the class and asked, ‘Why do you think it is important to work with right-angled triangles?’ I asked several of the students who had done it ‘wrong’ to talk about what they had experienced and what they thought. In this way, everyone in the class learned that making mistakes actually can offer very good learning opportunities.
They found making the closed polygons with right-angled triangles even more exciting, because they had the freedom to form figures of their own. Again, some students ended up making non-closed polygons but self-corrected. Gaurav made cut-outs of right-angled triangles and used these to compile different figures. Some were known geometric figures such as hexagons; others were more random formations and some were even figurines existing of several closed polygons. Students were interested in each other’s work and were inspired by what they saw their peers doing, and used similar approaches. Others used straight edges and a pencil to draw.
/ Video: Monitoring and giving feedback
http://tinyurl.com/video-monitoringandfeedback

Look at Resource 2, ‘Monitoring and giving feedback’, for further information.

Reflecting on your teaching practice

When you do such an activity with your class, reflect afterwards on what went well and what went less well. Consider the questions that led to the students being interested and being able to get on and those where you needed to clarify. Such reflection always helps with finding a ‘script’ that helps you engage the students to find mathematics interesting and enjoyable. If they do not understand and cannot do something, they are less likely to become involved. Use this reflective exercise every time you undertake the activities, noting, as Mrs Nagaraju did, some quite small things that made a difference.

/ Pause for thought
Good questions to trigger such reflection are:
· How did it go with your class?
· What responses from students were unexpected? Why?
· What questions did you use to probe your students’ understanding?
· Did you feel you had to intervene at any point?

3 Using the question ‘What happens if …?’

Activity 1 used the question ‘In how many ways …?’ to trigger students to play, explore and investigate how any closed polygons could be made up of right-angled triangles. Having the choice of how to go about this, and make mistakes, enthused your students to engage with the task.

Playfulness involves thinking about changes in situations. This is sometimes referred to as ‘What if?’ thinking. It works very well with thinking about variables in mathematics: ‘What will happen to the other variables when I change this variable?’ In this process of thinking of possibilities, the role of and connection between, variables and constants are also discovered.

Activity 2 asks students to think about asking ‘What happens if I change …?’ They can get a sense of ownership and feeling valued for their thinking powers from coming up with their own conjectures and by using their own examples to work on. At the end of the activity, collating information based on these different examples will also allow for generalisations to be made.

The activity also asks students to first think about what is going to happen before testing their ideas. This should help them to consider what thinking is required (called ‘meta-cognition’). When their thinking proves to be right, this can make them feel good because they get it ‘right’. If their conjectures prove incorrect, this can also surprise them and make them feel intrigued about ‘Why it is that …?’

Activity 2: Students discover asking ‘What happens if …?’

This activity requires your students to explore what happens if they change a side or angle of the triangle, and to consider the effect this change has on the other angles and sides.
Part 1
Tell your students the following:
· Draw a right-angled triangle and label it as in Figure 4.

Figure 4 An example of a right-angled triangle.
· In Table 1, each row indicates a transformation to a side or an angle of the triangle that you have drawn. The blank cells need to be completed with how the other parts of the triangle will increase or decrease as a result of the transformation.
· Make a copy of the table and first write down what you think will be the change; then check by drawing the changes. If there is no change, write ‘no change’.
Table 1 Transformations in a right-angled triangle.
Angle A / Angle B / Angle C / AB / BC / AC
Increases / Fixed
Decreases / Fixed
Increases / Fixed
Decreases / Fixed
Fixed / Doubled
Fixed / Is halved
Fixed / Increases
Fixed / Fixed
Fixed / Fixed
· What do you notice? Why do you think this is?
Part 2
· In each row of Table 2, you are given the size of angle C and the lengths of sides AB (the hypotenuse) and AC.